Posts by Mark

How can explain what you don't know?

We don't know what gravity is.

We can however decide that jumping off a tall building without a rope or parachute is a terminally bad idea.

We can use gravity to send probes billions of miles to other planets, though we don't know how gravity works.

Re: Please write more comments without checking the facts

I'd take some of that advice yourself.

ALL the energy (less, maybe, most of the lighting, but maybe only a small fraction) is used in work. Work that ends with the lowest form of energy: heat.

So your 30% isn't relevant. It's practically 100% inefficient (in so far as all the energy will end up as random thermal energy).

Unfortunately, you're not a AGW denier. I was hoping a "sceptic" was going to tell him the figures were silly and explain. That's what a *sceptic* does. Of course, they aren't sceptical, they just deny a problem.

@ Anonymouse Coward

We don't know if there's a point to life.

Doesn't stop us pretending there is one.

Burning hydrocarbons releases CO2

Oil is CO2.

We burn lots of oil.

CO2 traps energy from the sun and warms the earth more before its heat escapes faster to counter it and equalise.

We know this.

We don't know how much the earth will heat. At least to your definition of "know". We do know it will heat the earth.

So since the difference between going into a glacial period and not going in is only about three degrees, not a lot of change is needed to make the climate flip.

We know we won't survive at our present level of population if the climate changes. We know our technology is much more fragile than our technology at other times when climate changed.

Data selection

So how do you know that RSS is correct? It isn't the raw data.

You've picked one other dataset, but there are (IIRC) three different profiles for correction of RSS data. So which one did you pick?

And there are far more datasets than those three to pick from.

Selective reporting is as good as a lie. Sometimes better.

"I wish that we could turn off unlawful filesharing for a month"

Well, Oink was closed several years ago and it was "a major contributor to the filesharing damages". The net effect of removing them? Nothing. Revenue did not increase.

As to following the dodgy tracker, well there's a problem there too. And this one can (like the above) be read about here on El Reg: Media Defender put "illegal" content in a legal tracker. If the legal tracker cleans up, it gets DoS'd.

So no, they don't connect to the illegal trackers.

Another problem is that they will be sharing the tracked items. And that then is permission (because that's the only use of BT) to share the tracks they are torrenting.

This kind of legitimises the torrent and so illegal transport is no longer there.

Hey, BPI

I have completely legitimate content from BitTorrent.

Sure, they are pirated music, but the content was placed on BitTorrent by MediaDefender, an agent for the RIAA who is the agent for the copyright owner.

Since the labels maintain that the only reason for putting stuff on BitTorrent is to share it with others, the material they put up there through their agents has been placed there BY the labels for sharing.

And you are allowed to share content where the copyright owner has given you permission.

Therefore, the copies I have shared with the world are copies that have permission and no copyright has been infringed without license.

Sure, maybe Media Defender no longer shares it, but that doesn't stop me sharing it. The license is not rescinded.

I have some videos there too, but these movies are from MiVii, an organisation that shared movies until it was found out that they worked for the MPAA and were therefore, just like Media Defender, agents of the movie distributors and copyright onwners.

So no copyright infringement there.

What about legal filesharing?

And how do they tell the difference?

And while we're on the subject of VM figting crime, when are they going to stop the fraudulent misrepresentation of broadband providers? This one should be easy to ensure: DON'T LIE TO YOUR CUSTOMERS!!!

Sheesh, that one requires them to do less work, so should be a shoe-in.

re: speaking of assuming

Well, you're assuming that the pilots who'd have little training managed to ace this one flight.

You're assuming that although there have been proven lies about what happened, that they now are telling the truth.

You're assuming that the assumptions made were wrong without evidence (because they destroyed it).

You're assuming that NONE of the government could keep a secret because you're assuming that millions of people would have to be in on it.

And to the lot of you, I'm not saying that this was a deliberate killing on the same lines as the Reightstaag (spelling?) fire that Hitler used to get emergency powers (however, since it has been done before, why is it impossible to do so now? You still reelected GWB despite then KNOWING he'd lied about WMD's). I'm saying that there are many things wrong with the official explanation.

The conspiracy could just be covering up how incompetent the government were. The conspiracy could be covering up how the company building the WTC cut corners and put people at risk to make a little short term profit. The conspiracy could be covering up how much they knew but discounted.

You all seem to be as nutty as the worst "conspiracy nut" (see David Ike), it's just your insanity is that there CANNOT BE any conspiracy.

Why are you so certain NO CONSPIRACY? We now know (50 year rule and all) how many secrets were kept safe and only released because there was no reason to keep it secret any more. How come people then were so gullible and you are so uniquely not?

That, my friends, is insanity.

No, now YOU'RE being silly

Do you know what REALLY happened? If not, you aren't in the conspiracy.

There are people who don't believe that the Jews were gassed in their millions by the German army. Some don't WANT to believe. Some believe that the "evidence" is made up.

Or do we insinuate that the millions who know there's been a cover up all part of a conspiracy against the government?

And again, the ones giving proof are, almost without exception saying "well, it's possible I suppose that the floors concertina's down".

a) they don't know because they didn't get access to the rubble

b) they don't think it likely that it happened any other way

c) they just assume

NOTE: with (c) there were EYE WITNESSES in the Stockwell shooting that the Brazillian did, as the police said he did, wear a big bulky coat, vault the barrier and run away. Afterwards, in the investigation with the photographic evidence, the footage showed he did none of them.

Did the police make these witnesses lie? Possibly. Did the witnesses not see much and just assumed that "our gallant boys in blue" wouldn't fib so "remembered" it like that? More likely. See "12 angry men" about that.

Or do you really believe that these people who told these lies were conspiring to protect the police by lying for them? We KNOW they didn't tell the truth 'cos it was on camera.

@michael

Well, how about this way of wording it:

The towers fell down from an event the designers had designed this building to withstand.

Then of course, the conspiracy starts when you ask

So why were the pieces of the building that did not act according to specs get carried away without investigation of what the engineers evidently got wrong?

@secrets

Why would this secret require thousands or millions?

You need a few people to rubbish the report, but this could be done by one admin burying the report under other seemingly as important ones.

You need a crew of one or two in each plane if the planes were flown by professionals (nil if they were really the terrorists and you just used their work).

You need a couple of people (tops) telling the engineers to cut up the wreckage and take it off somewhere. At this other place, all they know is they've got some steel to melt.

If you planted bombs, all you need is one team who knows what they did.

I could see this one being just a half-dozen people in the know. Compartmentalised information means that only those coordinating the various groups need to know what is going on. And that's one of the major reasons for the "need to know" dogma that you get in any sensitive government action, be it army, millitary intel, civil intel, espionage or just operational work.

On "Paris"

Isn't a city "le" in french? As in the masculine pronoun?

How about if you named her after "Plaster of Paris" 'cos your dad was a plasterer? Is that male or female?

Since the moon is normally construed to have feminine connotations, are only girls allowed to be called "Moon Unit"? Or, since that could mean the Lunar Lander Module (a technical device, and hence geek and hence male associations), can only boys be named so?

Now when it comes to common names in English, they have no common meaning in a foreign langage (think back to the Windows trademark suit that had to go to Finland before MS didn't get kicked immediately to the curb because in finland "windows" had no meaning and so wasn't generic and unprotectable), how can a foreign name (Elvis) mean "masculine"?

Me, I'd tell the taxman to FO. If they want to name my child, then can pay for child support.

That sholuld've been

...was being left in IE9.

@Christopher

Who ever said it was?

@Christopher Emerson

Well these pages will have to be removed when IE7 doesn't support some Necessary Feature. It will have to be removed when IE7 support is removed from IE9.

And continuing to persue IE7 only pages when IE7 is no longer supported (will be happening pretty soon) doesn't seem like a sensible idea.

Using the tag only postpones your pain and, because you can continue to make broken pages because you use the tag, increases the pain you will have to face.

So don't use the tag.

MS, don't offer the tag. Definitely don't recommend the tag.

Alastair, seriously for you

I do code for a living.

And would it be better to say "Hey, boss, IE8 is out now so we don't have to code for specific versions of Internet Explorer any more and we can put a tick in the box of 'ISO9000 compliance' and 'standards compliant website' to make our work more obviously quality if we rewrite the few bits of the website that were written to avoid bugs in IE7 or earlier".

You don't know how to talk to a boss. Maybe you don't code for a living?

Oh, no, the simpler explanation is that you wanted to make up both sides of a conversation to prove your point, not to see whether my point could be valid.

Twonk.

@Christopher Emerson

"IE8 will support standards which break pages built for earlier versions of IE."

Don't you mean

"Earlier versions of IE would break when given pages written to w3c standards"?

And unless you want to avoid 20%+ of the browser market, you'd be writing for FireFox, Opera and Safari (in Europe, it's nearer 40%), you already have a w3c standard page.

So get IE8 to look at that by, oh, NOT identifying it as IE7.

"Vista now supports 77,000 printers, cameras, ..."

Aye, just for printers:

ESC P/2 : all Epsom printers

PCL5/6: all HP printers, most laser printers

Postscript 2/3: all high-end printers

and often (apart from Windows GDI printers) either PCL 5 or ESC P/2 is supported on Samsung, Kyocera, and so on. They may not have all the features (though that's unlikely) but that's support.

Few hundred there, but they're "free".

Cameras:

MASS storage USB: almost all cameras now

Windows Picture Transfer: lots of cameras (and heck, this isn't windows supporting, it's the hardware supporting windows...)

So all cameras pretty much.

speakers:

??? What, some sort of voltage thingy that is specific to Windows capable speakers?

Other devices:

Well, given they claim support for speakers, this could include devices such as "Desk". "Office furniture". "Microsoft".

So ignoring the odd last two (unspecific and silly), they have a support of (rough estimate) about 400 printers and 1,000 cameras just by supporting five protocols:

ESC P/2

PCL

Postscript

WPT

USB Mass storage

Forgive me if I'm underwhelmed.

"Then there is the fact that XP is old old old."

But that doesn't stop it working.

What about XP will not work in this new Digital Age? DRM not built in to the OS? Well, that's not the OS's fault. WMP10 on XP still has DRM (for all the good it does).

Does it run games?

Yes.

Does it handle all the families of hardware out there?

Yes.

Does it have multiple accounts so you can share the home computer with your family?

Yes.

So what about XP makes it no longer suitable for use?

Nothing is my intimation.

Re: Software firewall

True, Greg. As long as you don't trust the built-in firewall. Also, NAV (I think) said about the US government keylogger that they weren't going to block it. Huge outcry, but since the software is closed, this doesn't *necessarily* mean anything.

Use a cheap linux box as a firewall, log packets and cache the interweb. Reduces your risk and the cost of your internet connection.

Re: No surprise really

However, the difference now is that activations must continue to be honoured. Win9x didn't need activation and there were no bugfixes, so continuing to support it was minimal effort.

Not so any more.

@Tonto Popaduopolos

Re: "Violated". I don't have a TV and therefore have no license.

However, I get these threatening letters (one was a photo of a court summons on a doormat) from the TVLA telling me to get a license or go to jail.

I fell violated.

So when's the plot squad going to take them down?

Re: No sympathy

"Anyway, Serious - Yes.

Organised - Yes

Criminal - Yes"

Problem is, vivisection is not a light topic, so it has to be serious by default.

If you're disorganised, nothing changes, so it does have to be orgamised.

Criminal, well, merely being serious and organised can cause a criminal action.

None of which mean the actions are SeriousOrganisedCrime. The three are one thing. Not separate attributes.

14 million quid's worth of "wrong"?

Heck, it would be a lot cheaper to have the company pay for competent guards.

Though the acts of some extreme animal rights protesters are wrong, aren't we all told from a very young age that two wrongs do not make a right?

Re: not up to Yang

Yes it is. He's in charge.

The reasons for refusing could be so that THE COMPANY continues to exist and be profitable. That is ALL that the executives of a company have to do: ensure they remain profitable. Maximum profit isn't necessary. If you, as an investor, think that you could make more money investing in a more profitable company, sell your shares in Yahoo and buy this more profitable company. Don't drive the company to sell to a competitor just so that that competitor can close the company and make it have ZERO PROFIT just so you can offload your shares at a peak. That isn't profiting from the business, that's selling off assets.

ANYONE can make massive profits by selling off assets. However, you only have so many assets to sell, and you need assets to make profit, so your profit goes down as you sell assets.

Surely if the CEO's job is to maintain profit, he should be able to tell shareholders to stuff it if the actions they want taken will reduce profitability. If not, then his job isn't "maintain profitability", is it, 'cos it can be countermanded by another.

Parents too?

They work unpaid with children.

Theirs.